The Ballad of a Small Player (20 page)

But no one came. They left us alone and we drank half a bottle of port. “You have to understand money,” Cheng said as soon as he was toasted. “It trickles through your fingers like sand, but you can keep that flow going if you resign yourself to the forces of chance.”

He had made his money as a slum landlord. It was a good living and it kept his wife in her baccarat addiction in the style to which she was accustomed. If he didn’t screw the miserable hordes lodged in his rat-infested apartment blocks, how would Mrs. Cheng be able to play the baccarat tables every night?

“Perhaps you’ve seen her around the casinos? They call her Grandma. It’s insulting, but she accepts the name. She’s been playing the tables longer than anyone here except Old Song. Have you seen Old Song?”

“I don’t think I have.”

“Been playing every day since 1947. My wife is more noticeable, however. To the point where everyone knows her.”

I kept my cool.

“I’ve seen her around,” I said.

“She’s a noted character at the Lisboa, the Greek Mythology, and the Landmark. Those are the three that
she likes. The stupid woman never knows when to stop. She knows she has my account to tap into—and yes, I let her, I admit it—and so she goes mad every time she gets near the tables. She has no inner brake. She turns into a money-losing tornado. She’s a curse.”

I think that was the Chinese phrase: inner brake. Patsy (her real name) was a terror unleashed, but it was a quid pro quo between them, like allowing your wife to be an alcoholic. For a moment he pursed his lips.

“That bloody woman is ruining me! Half a million every night. She’s bleeding me dry, and it’s just because she thinks I have a mistress.”

“Well, do you have a mistress?”

“Of course I have a mistress. Do dogs have tails? But she takes advantage. I play myself, of course—but in moderation. I’m not using anyone except my tenants.”

He burst into melodious laughter that was, in some way, not melodious at all, and at the same moment, as if synchronized by horrifying correspondences, his skin broke into handsome rucks like a piece of stretched deer hide that has suddenly been relaxed.

“But that has nothing to do with Patsy. Patsy is in a class by herself. She’s a true thief. Patsy
loots
me.”

He suddenly leaned forward.

“You haven’t seen her here tonight, have you?”

“I’ve been by myself, as a matter of fact.”

“So much the better, so much the better. Preparing
for your great coup! Magnificent sang-froid, if I may say. Not that this is surprising given your background. I have seen a few of your types in action and I have always been impressed by your coldness.”

I wondered how much his large pigeon-blood ring weighed, or how a man could even wear one. It was not very discreet of him. He drank his port lustily and the ring winked as his hand tilted. The cuffs were beautifully laundered.

“Money,” he sighed. “What a wonderful thing. When it starts
flowing
into you. What a wonderful feeling. It’s like drinking vat after vat of the best wine in the world and still feeling thirsty. That’s the secret, Doyle. To keep feeling thirsty. Once you stop feeling thirsty you no longer want to keep drinking the wine, and then you’re a monk, or dead. Which is worse? I’d rather be dead than a monk. My mother always wanted me to be a monk. When I made my first million she went to the temple and prayed for me. But I never found out what she prayed
for
.”

“For your soul, Mr. Cheng.”

“What a word! You are probably right, though. But I kept my soul. It’s my bloody wife who is losing it for me.”

“By the way,” he added after we had smoked our cigars in silence, “are you calling it a night? After your coup I suppose you must be. Always quit while you are ahead. But you know that already. That’s what Patsy can never remember.”

“I am quitting for the night.”

“Excellent idea. May I ask if you intend going back to your room?”

“I have no plans.”

He grew visibly apprehensive.

“Do you have a club you go to?”

I confessed I didn’t, because the Clube Militar wasn’t a club. It was now a restaurant.

“Well, I have a very nice club called the Toga Room. One of these nights—I assume you are tired now—you should come by and meet some of my friends.”

He handed me a card with the club’s details on it.

“The telephone numbers are strictly private and should not be given out to others. When you call, give them the password I’ve written on the back.”

I turned the card over: the word
invidia
.

“Jealousy,” I murmured.

“It’s a club for men, so you won’t find my wife there. And one word of advice, Doyle. If you meet my wife anywhere in the VIP rooms, do not under any circumstances agree to play with or against her. If you play with her she’ll steal everything one way or another; if you play against her she’ll lose, and it’s my money. Can I count on you?”

“Shall we shake on it?”

He laughed uneasily and held out his hand.

“Why not? I like you, Doyle.”

His deerskin face tilted back for a moment and the
laugh was dry. The rich never believe it when one compliments them or expresses any affection for them. They know all the things about themselves that we don’t. And I suddenly thought:
I made eleven million tonight
.

“Come to the club, Doyle. Have you ever eaten pangolin?”

He leaned forward again and his breath was edged with Dow’s.

“It tastes like penguin and it keeps your hard-on hard. It’s the one thing I indulge in that my wife approves of. We can have it fried or boiled with plum sauce. You can have it any way you like. You can have it
battered
if you like.”

S
even suitcases of cash were sent up to my room in the morning, just as I had requested. I didn’t have a bank account and everything I earned had to be converted into cash. Instinctively, however, the Chinese sympathized with this. Like many Asians, they feel more comfortable with cash than with abstractions. The notes were bundled into units of five thousand and packed into genuine leather cases with handsome locks. When Mr. Souza had left, after expressing his congratulations, I emptied them onto the bed and counted the packets carefully before putting them back into the cases exactly as they had been.

I now had eleven suitcases of hard cash stored in my room, and I no longer thought of leaving them with the
management for safekeeping. The balance of power and trust between us had changed and I now thought that they were spying on me, keeping tabs on my winnings and—why not?—my movements. A casino never gives up its money willingly. But they were in a quandary. If they encouraged me to leave now, they stood no chance of ever recovering their losses. Under normal circumstances it would be in their interests to keep me there and to keep me playing. The theory would be that in the long term the odds would be stacked inexorably against me. But they had lost their nerve. They didn’t know what to do. If I stayed, I was also likely to be a big spender in the food outlets and elsewhere. I would at least be profitable for them in some way. And so a note came from Souza later that day:
Please feel free to accept our offer of an upgrade to a suite on one of the higher floors
. I accepted and the suitcases, along with my belongings, were transferred to a suite six floors above me. There was a kind of silence around me, and I no longer played music when I was by myself. It was enough to be alone with myself without interference, to sink like a stone into a mineshaft. I went through the casinos after midnight in my new suits as I had always done, and as I did so I felt the weight of the hotel’s security surveillance system pressing upon me from all sides. It was, of course, the ban that was in effect against me, and the hapless floor managers in every room had to make sure that I didn’t so much as sit at a table. They followed me around with an obsequiously
firm hand, and whenever I stopped to watch the play they hovered around me without saying a word.

You can’t open the windows at the Lisboa, perhaps because they are afraid of suicides, with so many desperate bankrupts checked in every night—so I slept with the fan and the heating on, with the curtains drawn like a death chamber. Then when I had recovered a little from my strange and slowly aggravating feeling of illness, I went to war again. I took a bath and ate a light breakfast from room service, eggs and toast and tea. It was a little before six and I ordered a bottle of champagne to go with the eggs. I downed half the bottle, then dressed for the fray, though it would not be in the Lisboa. I felt a cold, stable hatred toward the world and toward myself as I went down the carpet-padded corridor with one of my cases filled with about five hundred thousand.

NINETEEN

I
was calm as I sat at one of the tables at the Landmark, which here have yellow surfaces and Pharaonic heads. The theme is ancient Egypt and the bar outside the casino is shaped like a full-sized Middle Kingdom ship. The early-morning gamblers sat grimly and thirstily around the table’s yellow oval, where their fates were being decided without lifting their eyes. They were unusually rapt, perhaps because they were not the all-nighters but those who had risen bright and early for the game. They were the kind of players with which I was usually unfamiliar. The real fanatics, the guys who get up in the morning to play. The high-stakes table at which I sat had been witnessing some turbulent scenes just prior to my arrival and I had watched the whole thing with interest. Three men in sharkskin suits, smoking heavily, were playing to a small crowd who were goading them on with cries of desperate encouragement. The pallet turned the cards and there was a crushed silence as the banker swept up every single chip
on the table. The sharkskins moved away with wounded pride, and for a moment the mood was ugly.

A massive seated figure copied from the Valley of the Kings and an overblown face of Tutankhamen did not mitigate it. I sat down quietly with the chips I had exchanged for the totality of the five hundred thousand I had brought with me and placed a fifth of it—a hundred thousand—on the yellow surface. No one paid me much attention even with such a large bet, and it must have been because the sharkskins had lost much more.

The table filled again. I felt no apprehension at all as I, the highest-betting player, turned my cards before everyone else. The inevitable nine. I raked in as much as I’d laid down and started again. The players sighed and there was a dreary scene. An old lady cried, “Now look here!” and stared at me. Same result. I scooped up my chips and moved to a different table, and the crowd followed me.

I put down a hundred twenty thousand this time and won again. The bankers shot each other unsubtle looks and I played two hands of fifty thousand each. Stiff hands that in normal times would have to be played fearlessly. But I had neither fear nor the lack of fear. I was strung out in between. The first fifty-thousand-dollar hand was matched by the others, who were wealthier than they looked. No one could believe that a player would turn three naturals in a row.

It was like those famous streaks of red that are known
at roulette tables. The ball falls on red for eleven times in a row and the punters, confronted with a twelfth spin, must decide whether there is a statistical law that favors a twelfth red or a black. But ah, there is no such thing as a statistical law when it comes to chance. A pair of dice can fall as two sixes ten times in a row and no law has been broken. If they rolled as sixes a hundred times in a row we’d be astonished—dismayed, even—but no law will have been turned upside down. There is nothing that says the roulette ball cannot fall on red seventeen times in a row (as it does sometimes) or fifty-two times.

I believe a wheel at the Monte Carlo casino in 1897 rolled eighteen reds in a row and a German gambler made a small fortune on the eighteenth because nobody else around him dared bet on red. That man held his nerve. I had now played fourteen naturals in a row, and like that streak of reds my streak of nines was simply coasting along in its aberrant groove. It was one of those things, and the trick was to not succumb to any surprise. I didn’t. I played the hand as if it were the first I had ever played. I turned the cards and asked the banker to bag the chips I had won. There was nothing to it, and the spectators went silent in recognition of its inevitability.

Instead of playing the whole amount I’d taken out with me, I cashed in the chips I’d won and placed the united amount in my suitcase. I went upstairs to the lobby of the Landmark hotel and had a pot of tea, opening
the case for a moment to look at the rows of banknotes wrapped in rubber bands. It was now about eight o’clock and I was still feeling feverish. Indeed, these attacks of fever were beginning to increase in frequency. I wondered if the Paiza was open at such an early hour. I walked there without any haste and was told that the pits were open twenty-four hours. Therefore, if I wanted to make some bets I could certainly do so, and for any amount I wanted. There was no question of their not remembering me from the previous time. I was shown to one of their private rooms and served another breakfast. I made four bets and an hour later I had won a few million more. The cash filled four cases and I walked out with them as casually as a wealthy housewife walking out of Bloomingdale’s with her shopping.

A car was waiting for me at the doors and they wished me a hasty return with at least some show of genuine hospitality. I went back to the Lisboa and stashed the cases next to the others.

I
t was now obvious to me that my sport and pastime was going through cyclical patterns that were deeper than the usual ups and downs that a player must expect to endure. Bouts of indulgence and triumph were followed by periods of satiation, self-disgust, a determination to desist that had nothing to do with the feelings one experiences
during losses. These latter periods of abeyance were getting longer, so that I didn’t at all mind cruising from day to day without any visit to the tables at all, and while I lay in my pompous Lisboa bed surrounded by scarlet and gold I read the financial papers with an eye to investing the millions of
kwai
I had earned.